Council Approves Downtown River Barge Replacements

A decidedly much more “San Antonio look” is officially coming to the River Downtown.

San Antonio’s City Council has approved a contract for purchasing 43 of the all-electric barges–at a cost of $6.5 million.

The deal was completed after some testing on a prototype that has been on the River in recent weeks worked out a few bugs.

“One of the things that we learned quickly was that the motor was underpowered, so we upgraded the motor to a more powerful motor” the City’s John Jacks told the Council ahead of the vote, adding “We also installed some additional batteries because we needed a little bit more run time on the barge itself.”

All in all, Councilman Roberto Trevino sees a job well done.

“This has been an incredible task… I think it’s really good for our City” Trevino said.